


Who the Hell is Bucky?

by brooklynkings (SouthSideStory)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Analysis, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, M/M, Meta, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/brooklynkings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the middle of assassination attempts, false death, one very real resurrection, and some nasty political intrigue, with the Fate of the World™ hanging in the balance (as per usual), Captain America: The Winter Soldier manages to do something quite remarkable: it hinges the resolution of these major plot points on the conflict between two friends. </p>
<p>And somehow, bringing things down to earth, back to a more human level, raises the stakes rather than lowering them. Because, yes, while the possibility of HYDRA taking over the Earth from the heavens is objectively terrifying, we as viewers experience the events of The Winter Soldier primarily through the perspective of Steve Rogers. This is, after all, Captain America’s movie, and when you get right down to it, Captain America is just as invested in saving his best friend as he is in saving the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who the Hell is Bucky?

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is something between a meta post, film review, and character analysis. (Spoiler alert: I've been turned into 100% pure, Grade A, Stucky garbage.)

In the middle of assassination attempts, false death, one very real resurrection, and some nasty political intrigue, with the Fate of the World™ hanging in the balance (as per usual), _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ manages to do something quite remarkable: it hinges the resolution of these major plot points on the conflict between two friends.

And somehow, bringing things down to earth, back to a more human level, raises the stakes rather than lowering them. Because, yes, while the possibility of HYDRA taking over the Earth from the heavens is objectively terrifying, we as viewers experience the events of _The Winter Soldier_ primarily through the perspective of Steve Rogers. This is, after all, Captain America’s movie, and when you get right down to it, Captain America is just as invested in saving his best friend as he is in saving the world.

* * *

**The Man in the Mirror: Bucky as a Broken Reflection of Steve**

_The First Avenger_ highlights the differences between Bucky and Steve, the inequalities that underlie their relationship, despite its strength. _The Winter Soldier_ takes a different tactic, focusing instead on their similarities. Yet, it isn’t perfect parallelism that the film strives for; rather, the Winter Soldier is presented to the viewer as both a foil for and a twisted reflection of Captain America.

In the first film, Bucky and Steve fell to their apparent deaths, and although they survive, they were missing in action, presumed dead, for the better part of the last 70 years. They are men out of time, and their identities as _Steve_ and _Bucky_ , rather than as Captain America and the Winter Soldier, have been all but lost.

Steve and Bucky both spent most of their missing decades frozen, but while Steve slept away his time like Rip Van Winkle on ice, Bucky was suspended in cryo between missions for HYDRA. Although definitely traumatic, there’s a certain purity and simplicity to Steve’s long sleep. There’s nothing pure or simple about what happened to Bucky, whose 70 years as a prisoner of war “shaped the century,” as Alexander Pierce preferred to put it.

In _The First Avenger_ , Dr. Erskine cautions Steve that the supersoldier serum “amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great; bad becomes worse.” The Winter Soldier is no Red Skull, and Bucky’s metamorphosis from hero to villain is due more to the trauma he’s suffered than the serum that was forced on him. Regardless, Steve and Bucky are two Brooklyn boys who have been turned into supersoldiers, and the circumstances surrounding their transformations affect the results. Steve volunteers for Project Rebirth, and although he’s clearly a piece in a much larger military and political game, he makes his own choices and he’s treated humanely. In contrast, Bucky is captured, tortured, brainwashed, and made to murder innocent people. His body is modified without his consent, his memories literally wiped away, his sense of self eroded beneath decades of programming. Throughout the film he is referred to as a “ghost,” “the asset,” and “the Winter Soldier,” a nameless weapon who is denied any identity or agency--until the moment when Steve sees him unmasked and calls his name. And it’s as telling as it is heartbreaking that he responds with, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Captain America and the Winter Soldier are both instruments of military and governmental systems--Steve is a tool for SHIELD, Bucky a tool for HYDRA--but their handlers use them in very different ways. Captain America’s power is explicitly public, his superhero identity tied up with pro-war propaganda, his exploits recorded on film and commemorated in a museum and subjected to media scrutiny. On the other hand, the Winter Soldier is a figure who has, until the events of the movie, always worked from the shadows. As Natasha explains to Steve, “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists [...] he’s a ghost.”

This film sets up Captain America and the Winter Soldier as equals but opposites, a hero and a villain whose parallel experiences and shared past ground the bigger conflict, pinning the heart of the story on the love between friends rather than HYDRA’s machinations.

* * *

**It’s Been a Long, Long Time**

The Winter Soldier makes his first appearance in the eponymous film while the song [“It’s Been a Long, Long Time”](https://youtu.be/0dh3Ape1GmU) plays in the background. This 1945 hit was written from the point-of-view of a soldier’s sweetheart or spouse who is enjoying a reunion with their partner:

> _Kiss me once and kiss me twice_
> 
> _Then kiss me once again_
> 
> _It's been a long, long time_
> 
> _Haven't felt like this, my dear_
> 
> _Since I can't remember when_
> 
> _It's been a long, long time_
> 
> _You'll never know how many dreams_
> 
> _I've dreamed about you_
> 
> _Or just how empty they all seemed without you_
> 
> _So kiss me once, then kiss me twice_
> 
> _Then kiss me once again_
> 
> _It's been a long, long time_

This musical choice is apt but tragic. Steve sees Bucky for the first time since 1944 as the song plays, but far from a loving reunion, he doesn’t even recognize his friend. Later, once Steve knows the true identity of the Winter Soldier, and once Bucky’s encounter with Steve has started to dig up long-buried memories of their friendship, these lyrics become even more fitting. Seeing one another stirs old feelings that Steve has probably been repressing out of grief, and which have been stolen from Bucky. Still, despite the torture and programming he’s suffered, Bucky insists to his captors that [he knew Steve](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGkkfzrgk_I).

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,” Steve says, and before he heads to the Triskelion to bring down HYDRA-infiltrated-SHIELD, he recalls the moment when Bucky promised, [“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OACKizgVU) A promise which Steve reminds him of at the end of the movie, when he refuses to fight for his life if it means hurting Bucky further.

“It’s Been a Long, Long Time” is about a soldier’s homecoming, about the kind of love that endures time, distance, and war. Whether you prefer to read Steve and Bucky’s relationship as romantic or purely platonic, this song choice is amazingly appropriate for them. Steve and Bucky are each simultaneously the soldier _and_ the lover. They are veterans who never truly got to go home, who have been left adrift in an era they don’t belong in, who have been lost without each other. Their reunion allows Steve and Bucky to reclaim something of what has been taken from them, to finally begin to recover. It’s his memories of Steve, fragmented though they are, that ultimately helps Bucky to break through HYDRA’s programming, choosing to spare his target rather than eliminate him, and escaping his abusers to begin the process of rediscovering and rebuilding himself.

Bucky may not know who the hell he is, but he knows Steve, and that’s enough to make all the difference.


End file.
